The transport wing of the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) undertaking has been suffering Rs 225 crore revenue loss a year since the last three years. Neha Ghatpande reports.

The transport wing of the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) undertaking has been suffering Rs 225 crore revenue loss a year since the last three years.

The number of passengers has dropped from 45 lakh to 39 lakh a day in the last six months.

Of the 4,700-strong BEST fleet, only 83% buses are operational — the remaining have either broken down or there are no drivers to run them.

Plagued by problems, the BEST committee on Wednesday decided to form a sub-committee, which will meet regularly to come up with solutions to tackle these issues.

There are also 1,000 vacancies for the posts of bus drivers and conductors.

“The objective of forming the sub-committee is to solve the problems such as increasing losses and deteriorating state of the transport wing of the BEST and salary issues of the 40,000 workers,” said Sunil Shinde, chairman of the BEST committee.

The sub-committee will comprise eight members from the BEST committee — Ravi Raja and Shivaji Singh from Congress, Sunil Ganacharya, Suhas Samant and Sanjay Potnis from Shiv Sena and Chandrakant Pugaonkar from Bharatiya Janata Party, Parakash Patankar from Maharashtra Navnirman Sena and Sharad Pawar from Nationalist Congress Party — along with BEST committee chairman Sunil Shinde and general manager OP Gupta.

Raja, who proposed the idea of setting up a sub-committee, said: “The quality of the BEST transport wing has to be restored. The fall in numbers of passengers and operational fleet is worrying. It needs special attention.”

The sub-committee will also look into the issue of parking capacity in BEST bus depots — only 3,677 buses can park at the 25 BEST bus depots in the city.

The sub-committee will also invite the Sharad Rao-led BEST workers’ union to discuss the issues related to the salary agreement of the 40,000 employees of the undertaking’s transport wing.